Thanks to advances in information and communication technology and semiconductor technology, mobile electronic devices such as smartphones have become a necessity of life. These device can provide various services when users installs various applications in their smartphones.
In recent years, for purposes of authentication and the like, electronic devices have been able to recognize biometric information of users. For example, such an electronic device may include a biometric sensor to recognize user's biometric information. The biometric sensor may be, for example, a fingerprint sensor, a heart rate monitor (HRM) sensor, or an iris sensor.
User authentication through the biometric sensor (e.g. the fingerprint recognition module) is more secure compared with authentication using passwords or pattern inputs. In addition, the process of providing biometric information is simpler for the user than the process of inputting a password.
However, user authentication through biometric sensors may be very vulnerable to forged biometric information. As user authentication through biometric means (e.g. fingerprint sensors) has become increasingly popular in recent years, security attacks using counterfeit biometric information (e.g. forged fingerprints) have become an important security concern. For example, optical fingerprint sensors are known to be vulnerable to security attacks because they cannot readily identify fake fingerprints printed on paper.